Most of us don’t begin the summer by crashing the annual Memorial Day weekend gathering of bikers at Rolling Thunder, a Washington event to honor veterans. But most of us are not Sarah Palin. While Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty hold traditional coffee klatches in Iowa and New Hampshire, Palin is on the road.
More important, she is on our television screens. Amid 250,000 drinking and tattooed bikers, Palin kicked off her East Coast bus tour by riding from the Pentagon to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the back of a hog. Try ignoring that on a slow news day.
No one knows whether her motorcycle ride was the first leg of a presidential run or the start of an unusual family vacation. But Palin needs to freshen her populist brand every so often with a sprinkling of presidential dust. In recent weeks, she added a couple of political operatives to the skeletal staff overseen by her husband, Todd. For more convenient access to the lower 48, she bought a house in a fashionable suburb of Phoenix. A full-length film featuring her political rise debuts this summer — in Iowa.
Brand Palin needs some refurbishing. The last time she commandeered the media spotlight, she made a video accusing her critics of a “blood libel” for having linked her semi-automatic rhetoric with the Tucson shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
In addition, there’s now a tell-all book by a former Palin aide that makes Richard Nixon look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm compared to Palin. Only 44 percent of Republicans view Palin favorably, according to an October CBS News poll.
Palin kick-started her Harley just in time to muffle Rep. Michele Bachmann’s expected announcement of her candidacy later this week. Mitt Romney, the unloved front-runner, could actually be helped by Palin. He doesn’t mind the media chasing after a shinier object while he continues his quest to get right with the Republican base on health care. If Palin enters the fray, the Republican establishment will turn its lonely eyes to Romney to stop her.
Whether she is aiming for “the fundamental restoration of America,” the restoration of her celebrity or even a genuine run for president, Palin’s proving she’s still a player. Reporters fanned out from Fort McHenry in Baltimore to Gettysburg, Pa., trying to keep up with her bus, which is painted with “We the People,” a map of the United States and the Liberty Bell. Her impact is immediate, her timing shrewd. The best moment to shake up the field of 2012 candidates is before it’s settled.
